Editing in html

[Slava Paperno]

At 10:39 AM 11/25/97 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear colleagues,
>
>does anybody know about (or has experience with) writing html-homepages with
>different code pages? We are trying to instal a text for our chair in
>Constance in German and English, using also diacritics for Polish, Czech and
>Lithuanian. A separate Russian version is planned, too.

I assume you're working under Windows or Macintosh. Even if you're working
in Unix, the main problem with mixing code pages  is the same: the visitor's
browser can only use one font at a time to display your page. All standard
MS and Apple fonts will accommodate Western European languages, but not
Cyrillic at the same time. Since most of your visitors will use Netscape
Navigator or Internet Explorer, they will have to switch character coding
schemes while viewing your pages. In other words, to read a W. European page
(or portion of the page) on their screen, they'll have to select the W. E.
coding from their View menu, and to read a Cyrillic portion of the page,
they'll have to hit that View menu or Font button again, and switch to
Cyrillic (if any French accented vowels are still on the screen, they will
be displayed in Cyrillic). Mixing Cyrillic and the letters in the standard
(English :) Latin alphabet is not a problem; these coexist peacefully.

Since you don't really ever know what fonts are available to your visitors,
you can't even be sure they'll be able to read your Cyrillic text. You'll
have to provide a way for them to download and install some free Cyrillic fonts.

Two solutions exist.

1. The solution of tomorrow: Dynamic fonts that are downloaded with your
page. Solves all problems, except that visitors with last year's browsers
will see nothing. Visit Netscape's site for all the info on Dynamic HTML and
OpenDoc fonts.

2. The awkward but foolproof solutions of today: Turn the Cyrillic, Turkish,
etc. portions of your text into graphics; the problem then disappears.

For Cyrillic tools, visit http://lexiconbridge.com or the AATSEEL site.

Slava